


Concluding Rite

by DJClawson



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Backstory, Catholicism, Gen, Minor Character Fic Fest, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4655727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father Lantom was not always a kindly parish priest, and an unexpected guest reminds him of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concluding Rite

**Author's Note:**

> First off, this work was beta-ed by marmolita! Thank you Lita!
> 
> Second, I didn't include the full text of the Mass here, so it skips some sections. Also I totally don't necessarily know what I'm doing, so actual Catholics can feel free to speak up and correct me about theological things. 
> 
> Ulysses Klaue (Klaw) is a Black Panther villain who made a brief appearance in Age of Ultron. He's that dirty guy played by Andy Serkis who gets his hand cut off. Given his African backstory and Lantom's canonical time in Africa, I decided to merge their storylines.
> 
> Finally, I made up a first name for Lantom. He does not have one in the comics or MCU as far as anyone knows.

“Concluding Rite”

By DJ Clawson

\------

“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

If there were was a more ridiculous thing to be calling out while banging on the church doors at night in Manhattan, Father Lantom didn’t know it. He looked up from the solitaire game on his iPad to check the clock: 8:30 pm. Most of the restaurants and bars were still open, including three on this block alone, as well as an overpriced grocery store and a cheap bodega that smelled of dust and the store’s multiple cats. Plenty of places to hide, to say nothing of going to a police station.

But a man in distress was a man in distress, so Lantom took his feet off his desk and started walking to the door, bolted for the night. “I’m coming!” And he was probably calling the police. He knew it wasn’t Matthew (voice was too high, plus it was a bit too early) but it might be someone running from Matthew, which meant it was a criminal.

Well, he wasn’t wrong. He opened the door enough to poke his head through and the same man who’d been pounding on the red-coated wood was now all smiles and arms open wide for a hug. “Uncle Walt!”

When all he could think was _Oh no_ , Lantom forced himself into a calm, collected expression, the one someone would expect of a comforting priest. “Hello, Ulysses.” You’re not my nephew, he almost said, and looked at the man who called himself that. “You’re looking well. Except – what happened to your arm?”

“Chopped off Ultron. Ultron! Can you believe it?” Ulysses Klaw, or Klaue, or however he was spelling it now, invited himself into the darkened chapel, setting his heavy bags down on the nearest pew. “Still got a few scars yourself, I imagine. Didn’t you have a limp?”

“Corrective surgery,” he explained. “And that was a lifetime ago.”

“Yeah, I’d heard you’d put yourself out to pasture.” Ulysses didn’t mince words. Just like his father. One of his arms was now an actual claw, with two hooks – very fitting, but it just made Lantom want to pray. A lot of things about the presence of a Klaue made him want to pray. “Do you like it?”

“It looks very ... utilitarian.” He really didn’t know what to say about this filthy, bearded man reentering his life, if only briefly. “What can I do for you, Lyss?”

“I require sanctuary!” the kid – and he was a kid, Lantom could remember when he only came up to his knee – said dramatically. “Just for the night. I won’t trouble your sweet old parishioners with my presence.”

“New York has a sophisticated shelter system, but I’m assuming you don’t want to stay in one of those. Most people don’t, if they have the option.” And shouldn’t a guy so buried in filthy money get himself a hotel? They weren’t cheap in Manhattan but there had to be something in his price range. Or an Air BnB.

“What kind of man of the church are you, turning away a lost soul?” Ulysses said. “I need a cot and a pillow. And I can manage without the pillow. You must have guests. Visiting priests and whatnot. I know the new Pope doesn’t like you guys traveling in style.”

“And I know you’re not Catholic,” Lantom said. “Unless you’ve come to seek a new path, in which case the arms of the church are here to welcome you.”

“I’m not reading off my list of sins to _you_ ,” Ulysses said with a snarky grin. Again, just like his father. “One night. Let me store my things here, get a few hours of shuteye, maybe steal a pastry, and then I’ll be out of what’s left of your hair.”

“You think we have fresh pastries here?” But he knew he couldn’t refuse. Not without betraying the spirit of Christian charity. And he had been present for this boy’s baptism, even if it was done by an Evangelical missionary at a waystation in an African village. “If you’ll help me get the cot out. My back isn’t what it used to be.”

“No more running from local villagers for you?”

“Usually I hope they come to me instead,” Lantom said, hiding his sigh.

Fortunately, Ulysses _didn’t_ regale him with tales of his recent adventures, or even explain why he was in New York, or why he didn’t have a place to stay (probably because everyone he knew was mad at him or trying to kill him). He babbled about the old days, and Father Lantom smiled and nodded, and waited for him to tire out.

“Still smoke, Uncle Walt?”

“I shouldn’t,” he said, but the cigars offered looked expensive. “Tell me they’re not laced with something.”

“You don’t use Cubans to smoke _weed_ ,” Ulysses said, which was true. It was a waste. Lantom resigned himself to whatever penance the Cardinal assigned (probably not much – he was a smoker himself) and they lit up in the tiny courtyard behind the old building at Lantom’s insistence. He spent most of the time looking at the skyline of nearby buildings, wondering if he would see someone he knew, pursuing someone he didn’t know, while Ulysses rambled about vibranium, a substance Lantom had never fully understood, in terms of its practical applications, because it got technically quickly. Ulysses Klaue had always been bright, smarter than his father even, and he had an advanced engineering degree that wasn’t for show. He already had all sorts of crazy plans for his new hook arm.

The real shock came later, when Lantom finally had his guard just a little bit lowered, and Ulysses handed him a chunk of metal from his duffle bag. “That’s the real thing.”

It was a strange, unusually light metal, but he could tell it wasn’t hollow. It felt unnaturally smooth. “Tell me this isn’t illegal?”

“Not to hold in your hand,” his guest said, not very reassuringly. “Try to guess the market value per gram. Come on, this used to be your thing.”

“For ivory,” he said. He guessed he was holding the legendary vibranium. It was the most highly prized substance on the metals market and completely illegal to transport with special contracts, and that was just from reading the New Yorker. “I don’t want this here. In my church.”

“It’s not a hazardous material. You’re acting like it’s c4.”

“It’s an illegal material, and it belongs to the good people of Wakanda.”

Ulysses had his father’s mocking laugh, too. “Why don’t you just go hand it in, then? I’m sure they’d love to see you at the embassy. Might even invite you in for tea.”

“Statute of limitations,” he said.

“You’re going to hide behind that and hope it works? I hope you know a good lawyer.”

He did, but that wasn’t the point. Lantom set the raw vibranium down on the bedstand. “I want this gone by tomorrow. Good night, Lyss.”

He didn’t wait for Ulysses’s response.

***********************************

Ulysses wasn’t gone in the morning, and it was a problem. If anything, he was looking more settled than ever, smoking from an e-cigarette inside and talking on his phone in French. Lantom tuned it out. His French was rusty and he didn’t want to know what was said.

After prayers he went about his morning chores, cleaning the altar, polishing the chalice, and making sure everything was stocked for Mass. He didn’t have an altar boy on weekdays. He didn’t have any sort of help on most days, nor did he expect to. It was a school day and it was also an old parish; most of the former parishioners were being driven out by gentrification, replaced by owners of deluxe apartments who lived abroad and were using New York real estate as a method of hiding their money from their governments. It didn’t make for a large congregation. This morning he was grateful, and smoothing down the old wood of the pews with a cloth served as a meditation as much as a function of being a lonely priest.

Lantom wasn’t sure when to expect him, but he did have one member of his flock who wouldn’t present himself when seeking counsel. In fact, Lantom was pretty sure Matthew Murdock was there, particularly on the bench outside, plenty of times and Lantom didn’t even know it. It was hard to tell, particularly in the beginning, when Matthew first moved back to the neighborhood, if he was actually there to talk or just to find solace in the physical presence of the building. Lantom was getting better at it, but the troubled young man could make his expression unreadable when he wanted to.

It was one of those mornings. Matthew sat on the bench, his cane resting on his shoulder, not looking particularly tense but he always looked somewhat uncomfortable in his own skin and tailored suits. He was sporting a bruise on his cheekbone that could only be a few hours old. Lantom didn’t get this far in life by not knowing when to ask questions or keep his mouth shut, so all he said was, “Good morning, Matthew.”

“Good morning, Father.” The lawyer’s voice wasn’t mean, just guarded. He was always holding back. That was to be expected, even on a good day. And today was a good day, because his suit was newly pressed and his tie was straightened, and he wasn’t gripping the metal of his cane. His right fingers played with the fabric of his pants at the knee, but that tic was a constant presence, not much of an indicator of nerves.

“The latte machine is broken. Apparently it can only take so much use. But we have tea.”

Matthew smiled one of his weak smiles. He was acknowledging the gesture, not banishing his inner turmoil. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine.”

Lantom took a seat. This was their ritual. If Matthew wanted to talk, he would stay. Otherwise, he would get up and go to work. If he really wanted to talk, he would have come inside on his own. Lantom didn’t need to pry him inside with an offer of expensive caffeine anymore.

Matthew didn’t get up, but he didn’t talk, either. It was the third option. He was the kind of man who gave things time to simmer in his brain. Maybe his patience had something to do with his disability, which must have required an unending supply of it, if only to deal with patronizing people like the sweet women who swarmed him when he actually made an appearance at Sunday Mass, as if he’d never been inside a church before and hadn’t already found the braille psalter himself. They invaded the ample space he assigned himself by sitting in the back row, they made generous offers of their time and cooking (and daughters, if he was lacking a future date) and he always had a nice smile as he fled. Lantom couldn’t blame him. He did his research; he’d wanted to have a braille bible available but he was disappointed to learn it was 16 volumes long and very expensive. Matthew politely explained it was impractical and he didn’t expect anyone to buy one to accommodate someone whose church going was so irregular anyway.

“You don’t have to sit with me,” Matthew said, which was odd. He wasn’t telling him to leave; he wouldn’t do that. He was just leave himself.

“If you have some preconceptions about the fast-paced life of a parish priest with an empty chapel, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re mistaken. And my iPad is dead, so ...”

Matthew’s head cocked to the side and it was the sort of gesture that Lantom could interpret as version of a sighted person’s odd look. “Is something bothering you, Father?”

If Matthew was giving him an opening, he figured he might as well go for the jugular. “How is it you do what you do?”

“You mean specifically when – “

“In general.”

Matthew smiled for real now. “I rely on my other senses, which were heightened by losing my sight.”

“I thought that was a myth.”

“I thought that about Norse gods.”

“Very funny.”

But he finally did answer, “People are used to only seeing things with their eyes. If they knew what I could tell about them from hearing and smell, they would be disturbed. And I don’t want to disturb you, Father.”

“You’ve already cost me enough hours of sleep. Fire away.”

Matthew was amused, and a little hesitant. “You’re more tired than you usually are. Your gait is different – your feet don’t hit the pavement the same way. You have a limp, but it only shows up when you’re tired. Your voice is deeper. I’m guessing you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. Something was bothering you. It distracted you from your usual routine. You’re not wearing aftershave, so you skipped shaving, and you haven’t showered since yesterday. Your jacket smells of expensive cigar smoke, and you’re not the type to buy illegal cigars. There’s other odors on the back, mostly sweat, so someone hugged you, someone who’s not a regular visitor. You have disinfectant and metal polish under your fingernails, so you’ve been cleaning, but longer than usual. So you have a guest you don’t really like, and you’ve been trying to busy yourself rather than think about it.”

Lantom sat for a moment before answering. “You’re right. That is a little disturbing. I have a Sherlock Holmes in my congregation.”

“Everyone has things they don’t want other people to know. Mostly because it’s none of their business. I try to tune it out most of the time.”

“To keep your sanity, I imagine.”

That grin again. “Yeah.” Matthew swallowed. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You can’t tell the answer is no?”

“I’m not actually a mind reader.”

“Thank the L-rd.” He added, “And trust me, that was not taking His name in vain. That was an honest-to-goodness prayer.” Matthew laughed. It was a rare sound so Lantom drunk it in. “Yes, I have a troublesome guest, but I’m not going to turn him out. And I’m a bit behind on sleep. Priests are allowed to have personal drama, too.”

“Everyone has secrets,” Matthew said, but he did so rather innocently. “My law partner says he doesn’t have any, but I guess he doesn’t consider his snack drawer of cheese doodles a secret.”

Lantom chuckled too. “The difference is we can’t all have exciting secrets.” He turned and noticed Matthew was giving him the non-look “look” again. “You said you weren’t a mind reader.”

“I can tell when people lie,” he said, which was disconcerting. “Heartbeat. It speeds up a little.” He added quickly, “Everybody lies. More than they think they do. We tell so many lies we don’t think about. So, I don’t think much about it. But it’s something I wish I _could_ turn off.” And even more quickly he said, “You can forget that I told you that.”

Lantom sighed. He didn’t want to push Matthew away, especially when the young man, who so desperately needed guidance so often that Lantom felt he was barely managing to give, was opening up to him. “Of course I have secrets. They’re just usually between me, G-d in Heaven, and my confessor.”

Matthew nodded. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. It’s an extraordinary gift you have. It must be helpful for your career. And I don’t mean the secondary one.”

“You don’t know which one is secondary.”

Lantom ignored the jibe. “I’m just glad you’re concerned with protecting the innocent. You’re a gift to this community, Matthew, whether you know it or not.” He added, “Oh, and pride is a sin, in case I temporarily made you forget.”

“Maybe if people knew how hard it is to know who’s innocent, they wouldn’t think that. I make mistakes.”

“There goes your pride again. Thinking you’re the only one who makes mistakes,” Lantom said. “Knowing the right thing to do never gets easy and we all make mistakes.”

Matthew went quiet and Lantom knew he’d said too much. Not that he’d actually revealed anything, but he was Matthew’s confessor, not the other way around. Matthew was just a young man who had enough on his plate without hearing about the formerly exciting life of an old man who’d already paid in spades for his mistakes.

But the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen knew how to tempt. “If I ask you how to stop feeling guilty for mine, you’re probably going to tell me I need to confess, do penance, and pray for forgiveness.”

“That is the ritual.”

“But it doesn’t always work, does it?”

Lantom decided he deserved an honest answer. “Some mistakes leave scars. On the body, on the soul – it doesn’t really matter. They fade, but they don’t go away. We repent and are forgiven, but G-d doesn’t wash anyway the evidence. I like to think of them as reminders. Sometimes humility would be hard to achieve without them. Not that you should go about collecting them.”

“Hmm,” was Matthew’s way of saying, ‘Nice try, Father.’ “I suppose everyone needs a reminder not to repeat their mistakes now and again. Thank you, Father.” He stood, straightening his tie. “Have a nice day.”

“I’m around if you need me,” Lantom said. “And I know you’re a bit on the older side, but I could use an altar boy.”

“I wouldn’t know how. When I was in the orphanage, they never let the blind kid hold anything,” Matthew said as he tapped his cane against the pavement and started his journey to work, and hopefully, doing good for someone who needed it. Lantom prayed he could do the same.

***********************************

“ _In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit_.” Father Lantom crossed himself.

“Amen,” his audience of two responded.

_“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of G-d and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all_.”

“ _And with your spirit_ ,” they replied.

It was the usual crowd, if two people could be considered a crowd. One was a grieving widow, the other an immigrant working as a maid who was about to start her shift and was dressed accordingly. He didn’t punish himself over the lack of attendance. It was a Tuesday in Manhattan. Nobody’s place was packed.

He didn’t have the energy to worry over it, either. As he went through the rites, he tried to stay perfectly still so as not to irritate his back. The old wounds were throbbing, a combination of age and stress. Or maybe just having a guest who happened to be the son of the man who put the literal knife in his back helped the scar tissue along. He was more shocked to learn that Matthew had noticed he limped than he supposed he should have been. To beat up criminals without being able to see them, you had to be pretty observant.

“ _Brethren, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries_.” He paused for the moment of silent reflection without thinking about it; the rhythm of the Mass was second nature to him now. He clasped his hands together, not looking at the text in front of him. He’d used too much starch when washing the vestment, and it was itchy. He moved through the Liturgy of the Word on autopilot, for which he did feel a little bit guilty, but his mind kept drifting to the last time he’d seen Klaue – the father – in person, and all the hours he spent laying in the marsh, certain that he was bleeding to death, and wishing that it would come faster, because it was cold and dark that night, and the insects were impossibly loud, and everything hurt, and he was going to die over a single elephant tusk, and not even a big one at that.

_“I believe in one G-d, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of G-d, born of the Father before all ages_.”

In a better version of the story, he would have prayed to G-d that if he was spared, he would go back to seminary and devote his life to the church, but that wasn’t how it happened. He had just wanted the pain to stop, and death would have been an acceptable method for that to happen.

“ _God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made_.”

When he woke up in a field hospital run by Doctors without Borders he didn’t know why he had been spared, and his injuries were so serious he had initially wished he hadn’t been. There was nothing miraculous about his slow, agonizing recovery, and the malaria he’d contracted before the villagers had decided to turn him over to the Westerners, and the surgeries and physical therapy that followed. “Usually when men leave to sow their wild oats,” the bishop told him, “it’s a little less dramatic.”

“ _I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets_.”

But the seminary never had any doubt that he’d return, which surprised him. They had more faith in him than he had in himself. When the bishop gave him penance by sending him to Rwanda, he was scared. He wasn’t like the other missionaries, who expected G-d to protect them. He knew He wouldn’t.

“ _Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life_.” Father Lantom forced his sacrilegious thoughts quiet for the Eucharist. “ _Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink_.”

That was the most terrible thing he had experienced in the Wakandan marsh – loneliness. The knowledge that he was going to die alone, that everyone died alone, and that ultimately they were alone. But when he held up the Body of Christ it was different. The Divine could come to earth, and be present in their lives, and cleanse them of sin. And there was a time when Walter Lantom needed a lot of cleansing.

“ _This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper_.”

He was not worthy of it. He had confessed his sins, he had done his penance, he had devoted his life to serving others instead of himself. He had even forgiven Klaue, though he was unable to do so to his face, so spirit would have to serve. But at the end of the day, his back still hurt, he still had a limp that at least one person could detect, and doing the right thing was still hard.

“ _Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”_

The congregation replied, “ _Thanks be to God_.” They smiled at him and shuffled out, leaving Lantom to put the supplies away, including wiping the crumbs of the Body of Christ off the altar and scooping them up in his hands so they didn’t hit the floor.

He removed his vestments and carried them under his arm as he entered his office. He needed to run them on a cycle with fabric softener. Ulysses Klaue was on two different computers, spread across the wooden desk. “I want any illegal materials you might be hiding here out. Now.”

“That’s not very charitable of you, Father.”

“I’m serious. I’ll toss them in the Hudson if I have to.”

Ulysses stood. He was tall now, but Lantom was still taller. “And how would you explain why you had them in your possession in the first place?”

“It would be a complicated conversation,” he said, “but I would have it.”

“You think they’d go easy on you, just because you look like a harmless old man now? You think a white collar’s going to save you?”

“That’s not what it’s supposed to do.” He was supposed to save himself. He sighed. “Lyss, there was a time when you were like a son to me. Granted that was before your father stabbed me and left me for dead, but it’s still true. That said, you’re a man now, and you’re responsible for your actions. So I’m not going to turn you in, but I am going to insist that you leave.”

Ulysses took a moment to size him up. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“They wouldn’t go easy on you. There’s people there who are not as forgiving as the government, and they would try to have you extradited.”

“I wouldn’t fight them. Christ forgives. People are different.” He put a hand on his shoulder. “There will always be a place for you here, but not as you are. Take your things and get out.”

Ulysses had no words, which was saying a lot, since he had been a chatty kid and now he was a talky guy. He went to the guest room, emptied it of backpacks and duffle bags of suspicious material, and took his leave, letting the old door creak its way to being shut behind him.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t the only man without fear.

 

End


End file.
